I am away from my desk attending a family reunion. To get to bucolic Monticello, Illinois, I have driven through countless miles of land that was once prairie and then small farms and is now an endless stretch of massive sterile mega-fields servicing agribusiness. While I am reconnecting with […]
Remember 2006 when suddenly everyone was afraid to eat spinach because there were reports of contaminated greens in a couple of taco restaurant chains. It turned out to be contaminated iceberg lettuce that caused at least 276 cases of illness and 3 deaths. How much good produce had to be […]
Dave Baumler is my pepper guru. (see my previous posts on his exploits The Brave New World of Not So Hot Peppers and Peppers in History and in Your Garden ) He grows an amazing collection of peppers from around the world by starting them in his house and raising […]
One of the workshops at the Midwest Organic Farming Conference we attended a few weeks ago was called “Creating a Regional Food Economy in Our Backyard.” This is a topic Doug and I care deeply about, and it’s central to the plans we have for our future. We’re lucky. We […]
The day after Thanksgiving, and I’m still thankful. I’m thankful for the Dane County Farmers Market, which moved indoors a few weeks ago and made our table groan yesterday. We have been able to feast on mostly local goodies for the past few years, since we started to tune into […]
Composting is a rich and fertile topic, and there is always something more to learn. I got my most recent lesson at a presentation on Sheet Mulching by Kate Heiber-Cobb, a Permaculture Designer and founder of the Madison Area Permaculture Guild. The beauty of compost! Heiber-Cobb says that sheet mulching […]
It’s been a hot, dry October. Odd to watch the leaves being blown off the trees by such balmy breezes. But fall is fall — and that means crazed squirrel time. Winter is coming, and there are things to do before the ground freezes. With Doug teaching biology at UW-Platteville […]
